Better Teaching - Better Learning

Context / background: All partners were worried about teaching methods in senior high school level. Together we would reflect our teaching and make our work more visible and also share our teaching skills. There was a need to learn and try to use activating methods. In addition, partners wanted to strengthen the students´ social skills, using English in practice and ability to use ICT. We also wanted to get information about curricula and school systems in different European countries. The project “Better Teaching, Better Learning” have been a solution for four school´s needs to develop teaching, share good practices between each other and also disseminate the results more widely. Our plan was that during the project the students would take an active role of their learning. Objectives: To get students become active in learning process. Multifaceted and active teaching methods and stronger motivating would give them better possibilities for the future. It will help them to learn social skills and also life skills, and to promote networks. They would get better use of ICT and English language, and better orienteering in their careers. The project would have an important meaning for their lifelong learning. We also wanted that the teachers would develop and reflect their work and that other colleagues would have an example of working in different ways. Number and profile of participating organisations: 4 senior high schools. The project "Better Teaching, Better Learning" rounds up four senior high schools from four countries: Finland, Poland, Italy and Spain. All teachers in Oulu University Teacher Training School are subject teachers and also teacher trainers. They are also involved in in-service teacher training. Oulu University provides high quality knowledge about using ICT in teaching. IV Liceum Onlogozsklatcace im. Komisji Edukacji Narodowej uses traditional teaching techniques but also ICT and workshops. They have been involved in diverse projects which include theater. I.S. "Falcone-Righi" have put the traditional hierarchical teaching methodology aside and developed from peer to peer learning process. Their main goal is to reinforce key skills like learning how to learn, plan, communicate and cooperate. INS Montserrat Colomer has an agreement with Barcelona University and they train those students, with a university diploma or a bachelor´s degree, who want to become teachers in the future. They are periodically organizing situations for reflecting and improving their teaching practices Main activities: Learning new methods: We studied different teaching methods and chose the most interesting ones to experiment with: Do It Yourself, Drama, Peer to peer and Project based Learning. Every school was responsible about teaching one method to the partners during the meetings. Between the meetings every school used those methods in practice. Students and teachers presented their activities to the partners during the meetings, discussed about them together and assessed them. Every hosting school introduced in turn their school system and curricula to the partners. Evaluation had a great magnitude in the developing process. Both students and teachers took part in workshops where we evaluated teaching methods to find how we succeeded. All teachers took part in teaching during the visits so that both students and teachers got in contact. Students also took part in lessons to be able to compare teaching in different countries. In contact with people from other European cultures we grew up as intercultural persons and we had to practice English skills. We produced material together and shared good practices at our own schools. We used our evaluation instruments to collect information for next meeting. Everyone also documented teaching and student’s work by taking videos and photos. Almost every month the coordinator school organized virtual Skype meeting to get sure that everyone was in timetable. We were in contact by message, emailing and using our facebook group. Results and impact: We, teachers became aware that teaching the subject is not the only thing we have to do, and sharing knowledge is not the only way our students need to learn. It is also important that their students will learn to process knowledge. We realized it by using new methods and assessing them with our students. Together with students we found out that learning can also be fun also in senior high school level. As a consequence, we are going to use new methods in our teaching in future. We have disseminated the results by using many channels: our website, schools´ websites, twitter, articles, different kind of meetings, training situations and also videos and a documentary film. Students have now better social skills because of team working and also getting in contact with other European students. They have learned about each other´s culture and got life-long contacts.